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Originally published in the Historic Nantucket, Vol 43, no. 1 (Spring 1994), p. 72-73

Clinton Mitchell Ray: The Last of the Old-Time Basketmakers
by David H. Wood

The basket shop was a small building of uncertain age and doubtful permanency hunkered low to the ground on the south side of Starbuck's Court. Here, when he had nothing better to do with his time, Clinton Mitchell Ray, familiarly known to all as "Mitchy," split and steamed his oak staves, wove the long pale strands of cane, shaped his handles, varnished his finished baskets, and offered them for sale to a public that somehow found its way to this unprepossessing shop.

Mitchy was a third-generation Nantucket basketmaker. His father, Charles F. Ray (1826 - 1901), and his grandfather, master mariner Charles B. Ray (1798 -1884), had preceded him in the craft. Several other Ray family members also made baskets. One of them, Mitchy's great uncle, bore the patriotic name of George Washington Ray. Perhaps the family came to basket making naturally since many of them were coopers by trade, lending credence to the old Nantucket doggerel which asserts "...the Rays and Russells coopers are...." And, after all, there is a strong likelihood that our familiar island baskets were derived from and related to the sturdy wooden containers the coopers fabricated for Nantucket's whaling industry, and for household use as well.

According to island tradition, Mitchy learned to make baskets in his grandfather's workshop when he was only a boy. In the later years of his life Charles B. Ray turned his hand to manufacturing baskets and set and maintained high standards for the quality of his products. He had followed the sea from the time he was a boy, rising to become first officer aboard ships Rose, Otter, and Lydia. He then commanded a number of ships, the last of which was Susan out of Nantucket. His obituary (Inquirer and Mirror, 17 July 1884) refers to this whaleman as "...one of our oldest and most respected citizens." By the time he retired from the sea, baskets and other island handcrafts were beginning to be in great demand by visitors who were discovering Nantucket as a vacation spot. Captain Ray's son, Charles F. Ray, continued what had become a family tradition, though it is doubtful that he equaled his father's impressive record, which was described in the Inquirer and Mirror of 15 November 1879:

Captain Charles B. Ray had his 81st birthday last Saturday. Since his 80th natal day he has made 310 baskets varying in size from a quart to a half bushel, the most of which have been sold to strangers visiting the island. Many of them were excellent specimens of workmanship, made to order and fitted with covers. When we consider that the labor has been all done by himself, and the stock for the handles, frames and ribs of the larger baskets have been split from white oak butts, and shaved down, we can imagine that the gentleman has not eaten much idle bread since his eightieth birthday.

Captain Charles B. Ray's grandson Mitchy did not become a full-time basket-maker early in his life. As a young man growing up in Nantucket he was considered "wild," and his escapades, even many years later, were recounted as almost legendary by those who had known him. It is known, however, that on one occasion he rescued a young man from drowning at Surfside, a deed which earned him a medal. Mitchy left the island to become a meat cutter on the Cape but, as he told an interviewer late in his life, "I had to get back home."

He held various jobs, but turned to basket making soon after his return to Nantucket, established his shop, and, for many, became the most notable of all the island basketmakers. He pursued this trade virtually to the end of his life.

The baskets Mitchy made were usually labeled and, in his early years, were exceptionally well constructed and detailed. During those years he used simply printed labels. It was only much later in life that he adopted his most familiar touchmark, a paper label that said:

I was made in Nantucket, I'm strong and I'm stout. Don't lose me or burn me. I'll never wear out. Made by Mitchell Ray of Nantucket.

Of course, the basket market of the 1930s and 1940s was considerably different from that of today. Mitchy's price scale for his baskets was simple: "A dollar an inch." Thus, a sewing basket twelve inches in diameter was sold for $12.00. Mitchy's shop was broken into in August of 1953 and some articles were stolen. The thief set a fire to cover his tracks and the local paper reported that "...12 or 13 baskets were lost at a value of $12 each." Some of those lost were probably of the "one egg," or smallest size. Mitchy turned out a prodigious number of these, selling them to tourists for $1.50 each.

Although Mitchy Ray claimed to have made a number of covered baskets similar to those made by his grandfather, none have been authenticated. He did not, of course, make any of the familiar purse baskets, which started to become popular shortly before his death.

While Mitchy was, like his father and grandfather, a fine craftsman, there is a discernible difference between the baskets he made early in his career and those of a later vintage. The latter do not show the fine attention to detail and the tighter weave that are the marks of a truly fine basket. This is not surprising, because he was busy producing baskets just as fast as he could sell them. At his prime, however, Mitchy's baskets are fine examples of the craft.

Mitchy spent his last months in Our Island Home, where he died on February 13, 1956. His obituary in the Inquirer and Mirror said:

Nantucket's oldest and most famous basketmaker is dead. Clinton Mitchell Ray, known to everyone as 'Mitchy,' died on February 13....In his little shop on Starbuck's Court, Mitchy Ray was host to literally hundreds of people every summer, including among his friends as many non-residents as Nantucketers....Mitchy's lightship baskets have gone to all four corners of the world, and, like most good things, mellow and increase in value with their age.

Several of Mitchy Ray's baskets are included in the special NHA Centennial Lightship Basket Show appearing at the Fair Street Museum throughout the summer of 1994.

 

Nantucket-born, David H. Wood was schooled on the island and graduated from Middlebury College, where he did graduate work at the Bread Loaf School of English. For a quarter of a century he was teacher of English and drama, and administrator at the Lenox (Mass.) School. In 1974 he became director of the Norman Rockwell Museum at Stockbridge. He returned to the island in 1987. Mr. Wood was a member of the NHA Advisory Board and serves on the Association's Editorial Board as well.